This land is your land: Woman donates property to GLT to say 'thank you' to the town that became her home

Updated 10:47 am, Thursday, October 25, 2012

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Louise Mueller recently donated a property at 370 Round Hill Road, on the corner of Old Mill Road, to the Greenwich Land Trust. The property will now be known as the Louise Mueller Preserve.

Louise Mueller recently donated a property at 370 Round Hill Road, on the corner of Old Mill Road, to the Greenwich Land Trust. The property will now be known as the Louise Mueller Preserve.

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Louise Mueller, right, takes Greenwich Land Trust board member Louisa Stone for a tour of what is now the Louise Mueller Preserve at 370 Round Hill Road, on the corner of Old Mill Road.

Louise Mueller, right, takes Greenwich Land Trust board member Louisa Stone for a tour of what is now the Louise Mueller Preserve at 370 Round Hill Road, on the corner of Old Mill Road.

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Louise Mueller's nostalgia for her hometown of Mundelfingen, near the city of Freiburg in Germany, inspired her to purchase a piece of property in Greenwich more than 25 years ago. She recently donated that property to the Greenwich Land Trust. less

Louise Mueller's nostalgia for her hometown of Mundelfingen, near the city of Freiburg in Germany, inspired her to purchase a piece of property in Greenwich more than 25 years ago. She recently donated that ... more

Photo: Contributed Photo

This land is your land: Woman donates property to GLT to say 'thank you' to the town that became her home

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Riverside resident Louise Mueller, 75, remembers her life as a little girl growing up in Germany, on her parent's farm in the rural town of Mundelfingen, which sat in a valley outside the city of Freiburg, near Switzerland.

Her family grew wheat and potatoes -- her mother had a large garden. "It was a farmer's life centered on the church," she says, "We were old Catholics."

Then came World War II.

"What the Third Reich did is unbelievable," Louise says. "In our town there were no more Jews." Her father had not joined the Nazi party, she says, and avoided joining the army. "He was plagued by asthma," she says. But her Uncle Leo did join the army. He was captured and became a prisoner of war in the U.S. ("He was treated so well," Mueller says, "He was singing America's praises.")

Louise, as a young woman, was expected to follow the same path as her mother, to work on her family's farm. But she hated farming. "It was all hand work," she says, "There were no machines."

Then Ed Mueller skied into her life -- in the Black Forest near her farm. Ed was a pastry chef determined to seek his fortune in New York.

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Louise married Ed Mueller in 1964, and the couple moved to Rutherford, N.J. with Ed commuting to his New York job at William Greenberg Desserts. After the first of their two sons were born, the couple moved nearer to Manhattan, near the Whitestone Bridge.

But Louise was homesick.

"I was an immigrant coming from another continent," she says, "It's very difficult. I was missing that traditional hometown." She was learning, she says, "It takes several years to appreciate what this country has to offer."

Mueller would find that traditional hometown feeling when the family, now with two sons, moved to Riverside in 1972. Pastry chef Ed had his own bakery shop in Rye -- the Rye Ridge Bakery. Ten years later, the couple would buy up a plumbing business on Lewis Street in Greenwich and transform it into The Black Forest Pastry Shop. The bakery's name was a natural -- it was where the couple first met.

"At first we had no customers but, little by little, people came," says Mueller. During the day she was selling, and at night she was keeping the books. "It was hard work," she says.

Along with that hard work came success. So, Louise decided to invest some of that success into property, and she found a parcel for sale on the corner of Round Hill and Old Mill Roads.

There was a house on the property that reminded Louise of her farmhouse in Mundelfingen. "There were two kitchens on two floors," she says, "just as my (childhood) farmhouse did -- so my grandmother could live upstairs."

Louise bought the property in 1986 in her name, and for the next 25-plus years she and Ed invested their time and energy in improving the property. "There were two rental apartments in the house with open plumbing," she said, "So all that was redone, and we rented them again. We had a nice income up there."

She and her husband were a good team.

"We worked on the barns that had nice detailed work," Mueller says, "and Ed was a good handyman, and I was good with numbers."

Louise also added some touches that reminded her of her childhood home. "We planted more than a dozen apple trees," she says, and like her mother, she grew vegetables -- including "the best tomatoes."

"We were good stewards," Mueller adds. "We loved it."

But with Ed Mueller's declining health -- the couple had passed on the pastry shop to their son Herb in 1996 -- their stewardship grew more difficult.

"People were giving us offers for the property," she says. But selling the property, she knew, would mean tearing it all down. "I saw one estate after another disappearing" she says, "and replaced with large houses."

Louise determined, "This cannot happen."

It took Louise Mueller nearly 10 years to find the best way to preserve her property -- just as she and her husband had shaped it. The answer came with a call to Ginny Gwynn, the executive director of the Greenwich Land Trust. But Louise was told the Land Trust only preserves land -- not buildings. With 27 board members, the bargaining began, Mueller says, but she and her husband Ed stood their ground.

Louise cited the strong support she had from Gwynn along with board member Julia Burke and architectural historian Marty Skrelunas. "They have been great," she says. But it seems a question posed by board member Louisa Stone made all the difference. "What would we tell the next generation if we lost this?" Stone asked.

So back in June, Mueller turned the property over to the Greenwich Land Trust -- giving back to the town that became her home. She didn't want to reveal her gift, which is now called the Louise Mueller Preserve, until recently.

"I feel so good about it," she says. "I wanted to preserve the property. This town has been great to us. Where in the world can you get ahead like this and be so successful -- if you work hard."